Abbas orders demolition of illegal buildings

New President Mahmoud Abbas has put teeth into his vow to crack down on lawlessness in Palestinian areas, with bulldozers demolishing buildings illegally built by militants and security men on public land.

Bulldozers have swung into action in north Gaza where 2,000 security forces have deployed under Mr Abbas's orders to prevent militant attacks on Israelis to help him revive peace talks.

A de facto cease-fire has held in the region for a week.

Mr Abbas, who on Monday ended a week of talks with Gaza militants in which he secured a sharp drop in violence although no formal truce, ordered the demolitions after touring the area and finding much rogue construction on public land.

Orders to remove such buildings had been ignored in the last years of Yasser Arafat in which militants, many linked to lawless elements of security services, took over the streets.

Hundreds of Palestinian policemen have been deployed to protect the Palestinian Authority bulldozers as they start razing private buildings erected on public property in Gaza City.

To defuse possible public protests, the bulldozers zeroed in initially on buildings put up by security men, including a string of cafeterias and restaurants along the Mediterranean seaboard.

Municipal police official Musa Alian says hundreds of buildings erected without permits by militants, security men and ordinary civilians would be felled in coming days, adding that their owners had all received advance warnings.

"Our Land Authority warned violators once, twice and three times, but the state of chaos that had spread in the community [before Mr Abbas's election on January 9] hindered the implementation of the law," he said.

"We are now beginning a new era in which law must be respected and all government lands returned."

Mr Alian says some demolition orders could be rescinded in designated "humanitarian and social" cases where some ordinary people built houses on public land because they could not afford sites on privately-owned land.

Some people have demanded compensation for their investments.

"With all my respect to President Mahmoud Abbas and the law, I thank them for demolishing my place, but I have informed them that I invested $60,000 in my restaurant and I want to be compensated," Jihad Helles, who also serves as a security officer, said.

Thousands of other Palestinian buildings, including homes, have been demolished by the Israeli Army in Gaza and the West Bank since 2000 in what it calls efforts to deprive militants of gun nests and arms-making plants.

Palestinians have denounced such demolitions as collective punishment.

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